The Phoenix Steel Company was established in the late 18th century as a manufacturer of cut nails. It later became a major
producer of railroad rails and iron and steel structural members. Their records include minutes (1856-1929); stock ledgers;
brief of title papers and property maps; legal and financial correspondence and tax papers; account books; and a works diary.

The Phoenix Steel Company was established in the late 18th century as a manufacturer of cut nails. It later became a major
producer of railroad rails and iron and steel structural members. It remained a specialty producer and did not engage in backward
or forward integration around the turn of the century like the larger steel companies.

The operation at Phoenixville began in 1790 when Benjamin Longstreth built the first nail factory in the United States at
this site. In 1813 he sold it, and Lewis Wernwag (1769-1843), a pioneer bridge builder in the United States, acquired a part
interest and named it the Phoenix Iron Works. Wernwag was responsible for the invention and improvement of nailmaking machinery.
In 1821 Jonah and George Thompson, Philadelphia merchants, bought the plant. By 1825 it had become the largest nail factory
in the United States. In 1827 Benjamin Reeves (1779-1844) and his brother David (1793-1871), nail manufacturers in New Jersey,
purchased the plant and formed the partnership of Reeves & Whitaker with Joseph Whitaker (1789-1870), James Whitaker and Francis
Leaming. In 1840 the company built its first blast furnace to use anthracite, and in 1846 first produced railroad rails.

In 1846 Reeves formed a second partnership, Reeves, Abbott & Company, which constructed a large rolling mill at Safe Harbor,
Pa. on the Susquehanna River. Together, the two plants produced one-eighth of all iron rolled in Pennsylvania. Both John Griffen
and John Fritz received their early training at Safe Harbor. It was incorporated as the Safe Harbor Iron Works on May 5, 1855.
During the Civil War, the plant manufactured Dahlgren guns, but the works were badly damaged by a flood in 1865. They were
operated on a reduced scale from 1877 to 1894, when they were abandoned.

Reeves & Whitaker dissolved upon the withdrawal of Whitaker in 1847; the new firm of Reeves, Buck & Co. was formed, with Robert
S. Buck as partner. In 1855 it was incorporated as the Phoenix Iron Co., with David Reeves as president and his son Samuel
J. Reeves (1818-1878) as vice president. David Reeves started the first structural shape mill in the United States in 1855
and began the fabrication and design for bridges. In 1861 the company commenced manufacture of a cannon invented by John Griffen
(1812-1884), who was for many years superintendent of the Phoenix Iron Works; this gun was an important weapon during the
Civil War. In 1862 Samuel J. Reeves invented the the Phoenix column, the first hollow wrought iron column to be patented;
it became widely used in buildings and bridges throughout the country and was one of the company's best known products.

In 1871 Samuel J. Reeves succeeded his father as president and in the same year began erection of the largest rolling mill
in the world; this building served as a model for the Centennial Exhibition building erected in Philadelphia in 1876. However,
the huge works lay idle during much of the depression of 1873-1879. Samuel J. Reeves died in 1878 and was succeeded by his
son David (1852-1923), who secured large contracts for structural shapes for the New York City elevated railroads. In 1884
the company began its transition to steel and started rolling steel shapes for naval cruisers; in 1889 the first steel was
poured. In 1901 it installed the first fully electrically operated rolling mill traveling tilting table in its structural
mill. David Reeves was succeeded as president in 1923 by his son Samuel J. Reeves (1880-1944).

After the younger Reeves' death in 1944, the plant changed hands several times and became engaged in types of steel manufacture
other than the structural shapes for which its mills were originally designed. In 1949 it was completely shut down and then
acquired by the Barium Steel Corp. It was reorganized as the Phoenix Iron & Steel Company on September 6, 1949, and reopened
on January 14, 1950. In 1955 it absorbed two other Barium subsidiaries, the Central Iron & Steel Company of Harrisburg and
Chester Blast Furnace, Inc. The Barium Steel Corporation was sold to Stanley Kirk in 1959 and broken up. The Phoenix operation
was reorganized as The Phoenix Steel Corporation.

Phoenix could not survive the crisis that hit the American steel industry in the 1970s and the entire plant shut down in 1987.
In 1988 the Phoenix Pipe & Tube Company was organized to operate the seamless pipe mill set up in 1956. The remainder of the
site was cleared for development in 1989-90.

The records of the Phoenix Iron Company includes minutes (1856-1929); stock ledgers; brief of title papers and property maps;
legal and financial correspondence and tax papers. Account books (1856-1938) are incomplete. A works diary (1870-1879) is
primarily concerned with weather, but includes observations on events of the day during the troubled period of the late 1870s.
A notebook of Isaac Reeves is primarily devoted to geometrical and engineering formulas, with a few notes and sketches on
minor construction projects around the works.

The operations of Reeves & Whitaker; Reeves, Buck & Company; and Reeves, Abbott & Company are represented only by account
books, which show the financial aspects of transactions but give little operating detail. The Spring Mill Furnace is represented
by accounting blotters for the period of David Reeves' lease (1855-1866). The records do permit identifying major customers
and amounts paid for orders of nails, railroad rails, etc.

Patent papers include original patent letters, correspondence and a few drawings. The patents are those obtained by members
of the company for improvements in the manufacture of structural iron, for railroad turntables, rails, and fittings, plus
domestic and foreign patents for the Griffen gun. Engineering records include specifications and handbooks, including an illustrated
handbook on Phoenix Column construction. From the 1950s there is a survey for the construction of the seamless tube mill.

Shop order books (1860-1937) are simple lists of orders for parts. Shop improvement ledgers (1899-1940) show costs of additions
and modifications to plant.

Correspondence includes the following series: managers (1881-1929); shop (1898-1948); safety (1916-1937); steel plant (1897-1947);
and new mill (1897-1947). It is almost entirely concerned with product orders and typically take the form of ordering the
shop to produce a particular component, many of which are for use within the plant. Most of the letters contain sketches of
the part to be produced. Inbound letters (1888-1937) are from customers and suppliers and are chiefly concerned with machinery
for use within the plant.

A series of inter-office correspondence and memos (1941-1960) covers the company's period of decline under Barium ownership.
Much of the correspondence concerns steel being supplied to the Phoenix Bridge Company as well as that company's bridge projects.
There are reports of stocks on hand, jobs completed or pending wages paid, along with notes on salaries and pensions. The
Barium period is represented by printed annual reports of the Barium Steel Corporation; the
Barium Newsletter; some minutes of management meetings; production and cost statistics; and progress reports. There is some discussion of competition
between the Phoenix Bridge Company and rival firms over bridge contracts and Barium's attempts to secure defense contracts.
The Central Iron & Steel Company is represented by daily reports of its sales representatives (1961) listing calls on potential
customers.

The miscellany (Accession 909) consists of a small collection of material received independently of the main body of records.
It includes the annual reports of the general superintendent (1872-1922); a sales book of the George M. Newhall Engineering
Company of Philadelphia (1904-1911); a typescript company history by Catherine S. Sisto (1950); a photographic album of pictures
of a cantilever bridge over the Colorado River at Needles, Calif., built by the Phoenix Bridge Company, ca. 1890; and a sample
of letters received by president Samuel J. Reeves (1872-1878), primarily concerned with the Girard Avenue Bridge contract,
the Second Ave. El. contract, retrenchment problems associated with the depression; and a report on the Warwick and Hopewell
Iron mines in Chester County and the Jones Mine in Berks County.

A second collection of miscellany (Accession 683) consists of 335 items from 1844-1875, including correspondence concerning
orders for iron and deliveries to railroads. Also included are bills, drawings and calculations, and certificates for Civil
War prize money on cotton captured at sea by the
U.S.S. Quaker City.